For over a hundred years, the Drapers’ Company, one of the historic Livery Companies of the City of London and now a philanthropic organisation, has been linked to Bangor University, initially through substantial grants towards the construction of some of the University’s main buildings including the library, science laboratories and the electrical engineering department.
Three talented researchers will be awarded scholarships this year: Alex Ioannou, Harvey Plows and Conor Buchanan.
Two postgraduate research students at the Nuclear Futures Institute have also been awarded a Drapers’ Company scholarship, co-funded by the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Nuclear Energy Futures, a consortium comprising Bangor University, University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London and The Open University.
The Nuclear Futures Institute was set up at Bangor University in 2017 to provide expertise to support nuclear new build projects in the region and for the wider UK. The group, set up by Prof Bill Lee FREng, has expertise in a wide range of areas including nuclear materials, reactor thermal-hydraulics and neutronics, nuclear fuel cycle innovation, nuclear medicine, fusion and nuclear regulation. Since 2017, it has collaborated with industry and national laboratories around the world to bring the necessary experience to North Wales, ensuring that the next generation of nuclear scientists and engineers working at the exciting new projects can be locally trained, providing sustainable jobs to the region. To enable this, state-of-the-art nuclear facilities have been set up allowing partnerships to flourish and to provide students with the best experience possible for jobs in this fast-moving industry.
Harvey Plows will be exploring fluid dynamics experimentation with related instrumentation development in the water Thermal-Hydraulics Open-access Research (THOR) facility being commissioned at Menai Science Park and will be supervised by Dr Marcus Dahlfors, Reader in Nuclear Engineering at the Nuclear Futures Institute.
Conor Buchanan will be investigating aspects of targeted Auger therapy; a novel radiotherapeutic treatment that uses low energy electrons to target tumours whilst leaving surrounding healthy tissue unexposed. The project will be supervised by Dr Lee J. Evitts, Lecturer in Nuclear Medicine at the Nuclear Futures Institute and co-supervised by Dr Eric Aboagye at Imperial College London.
Congratulations to Harvey and Conor!
For more information on The Drapers’ Company, see: https://thedrapers.co.uk